Exploring The Darkness
by Nate The Ape
Summary: Zim makes a disturbing discovery in the woods, one which both softens and hardens his views on humans a little.
1. Chapter 1

**Hey folks. This is my first ever Invader Zim fic. And you know what's weird? I only know about this cartoon from other stories on this site, information on Wikipedia, and a scattering of vids on YouTube. But although it may be a gamble, I believe I know enough about the show now to write a decent fic. I hope you all like it! The chimpanzee's name BTW, came from an amazingly annoying and moronic song I remember my daycare providers subjecting us to.**

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A half moon hung in the cloudless summer sky, silvering the grass and trees of Blithering Idiot State Park. It had been dry and hot for the past week, with no rainfall, and the lack of water to burn into his flesh was a distinct blessing for Zim as he strolled under and among the maple trees.

Childlike yet electronic giggling punctuated the cool air above and around the Irken as, his cyan eyes twinkling with merriment and excitement, Gir bounced from bough to bough, or ricocheted off of tree trunks like a squirrel. Normally, the manic android would've been clothed in his customary dog costume to escape notice by the humans. Out here though, deep in the woods and under the cover of darkness, with no one but wild animals to see him, Gir could enjoy the privilege of showing his true form outdoors.

Zim however, was not out in this forest, in this part of the park for a simple stroll. Oh no, he was ZIM, and Zim did nothing frivolous! No, he'd discovered on the news that in this very park, this very Sunday, there was going to be a performance by the massively popular band Armadillo Pee, playing their inferior ear-torturing human music to hundreds of stink pig fans!

When the mediocre human news program had ended, the channel had then played an old movie unimaginatively titled "The Blob." But oh, how Zim had loved it! How wonderful it'd been, even if pathetically stimulated with inferior effects, to see the humans shrieking like the doomed fleshmonkeys that they were and running in panic from the squishy, crimson thing that administered instant DOOM to them on contact!

And in a serendipitous moment of inspiration that could only have been seized and appreciated by ZIM's dazzling intellect of dazzlingness, the Irken realized he could doom some of these planet's humans in a similar fashion! All he would need to do was make an enormous batch of smothering cherry Gell-O blobness, and then place it in an area of the woods above where the concert was going to take place. When the badly doomed human pig smellies all arrived on Sunday and became caught up in their excitement, the great Zim would unleash a Jell-O flood of _DOOM _upon them from the hills! Barring the efforts of that Dib-stink, the Irken didn't see how this plan could possibly go wrong!

First of all though, he had to scout for a suitable spot to construct a holding tank for all that Gell-O, which was why he was wandering around out here in the first place.

"Look at me master! I'm a bat!" Gir squealed, diving down in front of Zim and hanging from a low branch by his metallic ankles.

"Very nice Gir," was Zim's unimpressed reply as he strode on, examining the land around him.

"Do you think tree bark tastes good? I wanna try some!" Gir suggested enthusiastically as he dropped from the branch and crashed to the forest floor on his back. Giggling, the robot righted himself, went over to a red oak, and ripped off a slab of bark, which he promptly took a bite out of.

The things that android eats, thought Zim.

A delighted expression flowed across Gir's face while he chewed. "Hey!" he cried. "This bark stuff tastes really goooodddd! I'd better share some with Pig and Minimoose."

"That's such a nice gesture of you Gir," Zim distantly said.

As the Irken trotted down a gentle slope, he suddenly picked up a faint, coppery, protein-rich scent with his superior, flawless Irken senses. He'd smelt it before, and knew that it was the odor of an Earth-mammal's blood. Freshly shed at that.

It came from a little open place, thick with dogwood bushes, raspberry canes, and long, herbal-smelling grass, a couple hundred yards away. Forgetting his reconnaissance for the moment, Zim curiously turned and headed towards its source. It was from something dead, but what?

During his time on Earth, the Irken had learned that life on this planet was dizzyingly complex, and often cheap. Whether human or animuhl, its creatures lived hard and fast, intense, competitive, and usually short lives. Everything fed on something else.

Whenever Zim had had reason to go outside the city, into the fields and forests, he'd occasionally come across the remains of some inferior prey animuhl that had been killed by a mighty flesh eater, or even a human smelly with their pathetically inferior projectile weapons. Deer, calves, or sheep that'd been torn by masterless dogs, coyotes, bobcats. Rabbits that had fallen victim to foxes, hawks, owls, the scattered feathers and bills of birds who'd been pierced by the talons of their predatory cousins or whose flight hadn't been enough to save them from a quick land predator. The scales and bones of fish snatched by ospreys, bald eagles, otters, mink, black bears-all just one more casualty in the never ending, raw struggle to live another day.

Even Zim had personally experienced the harsh, dangerous side of the planet's beasts once, in a different park than this. Several months ago, Ms. Bitters had assigned each member of her class to go out and find wild animal poop over the weekend for a science activity. As much as it had disgusted Zim to search for and touch filthy revolting smelly poop, he still had to keep up appearances as a normal human student. So he'd gone out with Gir to Deerfly Bite Regional Park and walked the trails to look for some.

Going over one rise in a path, Zim had come across a stocky, tubular, coal black animuhl coiled up in a loose heap, with a drooping pillar of what looked like weird pebbles attached to its tail. Seeing the Irken approach, the alien creature glared at him and rapidly shook them, producing a sound that sounded like something being dissolved by acid.

This was clearly insolent behavior, and no pathetic Earth-beast that was even _lower_ than a human displayed insolence to Zim! Miffed, he'd howled, "What? You _dare_ to block ZIM'S path, and then defy him by shaking your tail?"

Approaching the tubular black being, he'd hoped to intimidate it into moving with his superior tallness. Instead though, it had continued to glare at him and raised the front part of its body off the ground as the Irken stepped closer. Zim then noticed that the creature was not only refusing to move, it was _sticking its tongue out at the great ZIM!!_

This was the last straw, and Zim had whipped out a laser. Bending down to the animuhl, he'd stuck it right in that scaly face, screeching, "Prepare to be doomed by superior Irken technology, writhing Earth crea-AAHHHH!!"

The Earth lifeform, which Zim later discovered was called a timber rattlesnake, struck then, lashing out like a whip to plant its fangs into the cyborg's arm. Its venom had felt like twin injections of acid and being hit with a metal pole at the same time as Zim dropped his weapon and screamed, jumping and running around in terror and agony. Gir had been little help, considering it all one big joke and mimicking his distressed master's actions, laughing wildly and even saying at one point, "What a funny pet this would make!"

Leaving the discarded ray gun behind, Zim had torn away down the trail shrieking like a deranged parrot, hoping he could get to his base and its medical bay before the venom overcame him. When he began stumbling and falling to his knees, he'd firmly implored Gir to take him home upon his back and not to dare stop for anything. Amazingly, the defective robot had actually followed _both _orders, transporting his suffering master back home successfully.

Taking the elevator down into his hidden base of operations for Impending Doom, the Irken had hooked himself up to a special filtering machine and run all of his blood through it to remove the venom, the cleansed results going back into his body via a second tube. Even so, Zim had had a small batch of additional blood produced by the machine, based on the information contained in his DNA, and gave himself a transfusion with it.

It'd taken him three whole days to fully recover, all the while pondering how it would've been so pathetically humiliating above all humiliatingness if the mighty _ZIM_ had been DOOMED by some legless inferior scaly worm beast! (As for the laser he'd left behind, an escaped circus chimp named Bobo Skee Watling Tautling came across it a couple weeks later while she was on the run from animal control and police officers, using it to engage them in a running battle that culminated just below Rolling Goat Head Dam. Unfortunately, a stray shot on Bobo's part resulted in her, the officers, several families having picnics, a class of fourth graders on a field trip, and two-thirds of a small town's population all perishing in a watery flood of doom. Oh well.)

Yes, danger and doom ran riot out here, in the wild places, Zim thought as he strolled over to the place where the blood stink came from. From the amount of it, he was more or less certain now that the dead beast was a deer.

What he saw in the moonlight, sprawled limp between two dogwood bushes and screened by grass, was totally different, and came as a complete surprise.

It was the body of a woman.

In her middle thirties, she was Hispanic, with cocoa brown skin, her long, wavy black hair held in place by a pink barrette. Zim saw that she was dressed in blue jeans and a light purple T-shirt with the red-nosed kat from that older kartune series that Gir and many young human wormbabies liked to watch on it-what was it called? Luny Tunes or something like that?

Great patches of soaked-in blood showed dark on her clothing in the moonlight, and the scent of fear-sweat lay heavy over her. She seemed to have been killed only a few hours ago, from what Zim's senses told him.

Frowning, the Irken cocked his head thoughtfully as he regarded the body and surveyed the immediate area before coming closer. He wasn't all that disturbed by the discovery-from the green-skinned alien's perspective, this was hardly any different then it would be for the human hiker that came across a dead whitetail doe or vixen fox-or worried about being in danger himself, just puzzled by this mystery.

What on this dirtball had killed her? Zim remembered hearing on the news several months ago about how on the other side of the large stone island, in "Kalifournia," a woman had been killed by a very large kat known as a "kugrrr" while hiking. Maybe one these "kugrrrs" had also done the same thing to her.

It was only when he went right up to the woman's dead body that he realized. No animuhl had done this human female in. Her throat was marked by great, terrible spreading bruises, almost like fingerpainted wings. She'd been strangled and stabbed to death by one of her own kind.

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Second and last chapter to be posted soon! R and R please.


	2. Chapter 2

**Wow, thanks everyone for your encouraging reviews!! I'm pleasantly surprised to hear that I've done so well at capturing the spirit of the show, Zim, and Gir.**

**Anyhow, this is the final chapter.**

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"By the First of the Tallests…" Zim shrilly croaked as he shied back, his squeeglyspooch twisting sickly as the ghastly truth hit him. Fear came right on its heels.

Was this murdered woman a gruesome warning, a message to Zim from a human enemy who intended to DOOM him at a later date, saying that he should watch out? Certainly, he'd heard of humans doing similar things before striking at an enemy or someone who'd been foolish enough to anger them. Was an enemy watching him even now?

"Come out and face the mighty Zim in combat with your inferior human weapons like a true warrior, lurking human stink-pig enemy!" he challenged to the moonlit forest, not exactly feeling as brave as he sounded. There was a rapid crunching of leaves behind him, and the Irken leapt into the air with a panicked yell, turning around and coming down on his feet.

To his profound embarrassment, it was only Gir, screeching joyfully as he spun around and kicked in the leaves and seedlings. Feeling mighty foolish, Zim's momentary terror dissipated to be replaced by cool analysis. Racking his brain meats, the Irken ignored the sounds of Gir's play as he tried to think who'd have reason to threaten him in such a nasty way.

Dib? Zim pondered and dismissed the idea in the same moment. At just ten years old, with all his saintly babbling about stopping the Irken and saving the human race, and the amazing beyond amazing tolerance he showed towards the taunts of his classmates, the Dib-stink worm baby obviously didn't have the strength or inclination to do this. Besides him, Zim couldn't really come up with any other human candidates. Apparently the great majority were-and quite rightfully-either too scared or too stupid to even try to engage such an advanced being.

So that meant that the great Invader was in no danger from any fleshmonkey adversary who meant to doom him. Not that anything ever _could _endanger Zim in the first place of course. This greatly relieved him.

But Zim was also greatly appalled and, as he so often was whenever he contemplated human behavior, utterly unable to come to grips with the reasoning behind this act.

Despite their warlike, often aggressive nature, Irkens rarely murdered members of their own race. And whenever it did happen, it was always for a perfectly valid reason. Every single member of the Irken empire was expected to display utter allegiance and patriotism, to follow and obey any and all orders from their superiors without question, and carry them out in the most competent and efficient manner possible.

The Irken that chose to display insubordination, made an especially serious mistake while on duty, or-Tallests forbid-turned traitor, played very fast and loose with his or her life indeed. Zim had occasionally seen one of these _doomed_ to the thousandth degree underlings be publicly executed, and it was never a pleasant sight.

And once in a blue moon, to use a human phrase, Zim knew that there were times when two competing Irkens, especially males, would cast diplomacy or one-upmanship to the fire, and engage in a no-holds barred duel to the death. Sometimes it was over a coveted position, sometimes over the attentions of a female-but always a savage spectacle.

These contests were rarer, but by no means unknown, among female Irkens as well. Still, Zim had seen them take place over a popular male, including one of his classmates and friends, the high-ranking Invader Krug. It was an event he prayed never to be at the epicenter of.

But the stink humans seemed to slay each other almost on the spur of the moment, Zim thought as he considered the woman's body. He knew that sometimes they did it in self-defense, in order to keep from being killed by another human attacker, and there was nothing shameful about that.

They also killed and doomed each other in the name of conquest, which the Invader most _definitely _approved of. And yet, looking at the slaughtered woman in the moonlight, the Irken felt several bizarre, terribly confusing feelings rise up within his cyborg body.

With a shock, Zim realized that he was actually _troubled_ by what had been done to this human female. It didn't make a bit of sense. After all, wasn't it his mission, his reason for being on this planet in the first place, to ultimately conquer, kill, and enslave as much of the human race as he possibly could and place it under the Irken flag?

Didn't he intend, just four days from now, to smother and drown several hundred times more individuals in a colossal rush of cherry Jell-O? And didn't her grisly death simply mean one less human to deal with later on? She was basically little different than an ape as far as he was concerned, an animal, a member of an inferior, lesser, ridiculous species.

So why did he find it distressing? Why was his squeeglyspooch in his throat? Why was he actually feeling-No, no, Irkens didn't feel things like _this_!-pity and sadness? He wrestled with the foreign emotions, battling to return to what he knew was the proper Irken way to think.

The reason, he understood then, was because there'd been no purpose at all. Her murderer had done this just for the sport of it, to enjoy the demented thrill of so totally dominating and inflicting pain on his powerless victim. She hadn't been standing in the way of something he'd wanted, or posing a threat to him in the least, just innocently going about her life.

The Irken thought of how, every time he watched the human news, he'd see at least a couple stories about a human being shot dead. These creatures called themselves advanced, civilized, and yet were so good, disturbingly good, at killing each other for the flimsiest, most unjustifiable motives!

Zim gritted his zipper teeth in outraged fury, eyes gleaming like rubies. And Dib had the gall, the hypocritical _audacity_ to screech at Zim that he and his kind were heartless, dangerous monsters?

Look who's talking, you sanctimonious wormbaby.

With the way the humans near-sociopathically harmed and killed each other, Zim thought, they _deserved _to be conquered! It was their just desserts, and indeed, he was _rescuing_ them from themselves by taking over this planet, he figured. Probably in the nick of time too.

The Irken was distracted from his infuriated thoughts as Gir wandered over, chewing on a piece of a stump. Seeing the woman's body, the robot stared at it with casual curiosity before asking "What's that master?"

"It's a woman Gir. A grown female human."

"Oh, coooolll!! Maybe she'll like to play with me and teach me how to garden," Gir said hopefully. Halting three feet from the corpse, Gir politely squealed, "Wake up nice lady!! I wanna play tag and learn how ta pull weeds from you!"

"Gir, she's not going to wake up. Ever," Zim told him in irritation.

"Why not master?"

"Because…she's just been killed by a very evil human fleshmonkey Gir. She's dead."

The Irken had no clue if it was the realization of the tragedy or simply his disappointment at not being able to interact with the victim that did it. At any rate, Gir's response was one that seemed to best express the choking, risen unfamiliar feeling in Zim's own throat.

The android drew back several paces. Then his massive falcate turquoise eyes brimmed and he fell to the forest floor, weeping and crying as he pounded the leaves with his metal fists.

Normally Zim ignored these tearful outbursts/tantrums by his robot. Gir had an annoying habit of fussing and crying and generally going into hysterics about the smallest thing, or absolutely nothing at all for that matter. Plus, the Irken thought them to be a disgraceful, unbecoming display of weakness.

But yet…on this night, with the limp, cooling form of a murdered woman before them, it seemed to be a more than appropriate reaction somehow. Not really knowing what to do, Zim went over to Gir and halfheartedly patted him on the top of his cylindrical head, muttering vaguely remembered human phrases of reassurance like "It's okay Gir, It's a shame, yeah," and so on.

Gir was always one to bounce back quickly though, and it wasn't long before his sobs turned to sniffles. As he stood back up, a part of Zim was shocked to hear him say to his robot, "Are you feeling any better Gir?"

Gir distantly nodded. "Yes master. But I wanna go home now."

Thinking about his original purpose for being out here, Zim started to snap, "Gir! We're _not_ going home until we find a good spot to build the Gel-"

Suddenly, the Irken paused as he remembered the dead woman just a few yards away. The concert wouldn't take place for four more days, and it was very likely that her body would be found during that time. That would mean a lot of poleece officers, dogs, and other humans would be running around here. As foolish and incompetent as fleshmonkey law enforcement was, they still wouldn't and couldn't fail to notice an enormous holding tank filled with Gell-O. Plus, having them and their weapons around in the first place, in large numbers at that, always secretly made Zim somewhat worried about his safety.

Reluctantly, Zim sighed. "All right Gir, we'll go home. I'll even pur-chase you all the Chocolate Frosted Flakes and Lucky Charms you can eat for a week tomorrow morning."

"Yayyy!! Sugar cereal!!" the robot cheered in delight.

As he turned away and left the murder scene, Zim looked back at the dead woman one last time. Once more, a small flame of indignantion flared up within his cyborg body.

"It isn't my place or interest to become involved in your kind's affairs human," he told her, "but I apologize for what was done to you. And if the worthless fleshmonkey who brought about your untimely doom is captured…I promise that I Zim shall go to the incarceration facility where they are being kept, and avenge you."

Three months later, Zim got his chance.

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**This fic is dedicated to all the innocent women whose lives are or have been violently cut short each year, whether at the hands of someone they knew and trusted, or by some random savage who believed that might and inhumanity made right. May each one of them and her loved ones find peace, answers, and especially justice.**


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